Long Acting Thyroid Stimulator of Graves's Disease

Abstract

GRAVES and Basedow independently reported, between 1835 and 1843, an illness characterized by diffuse thyroid enlargement, exophthalmos and thyrotoxicosis. The etiology of this disease has since principally been ascribed to hypersecretion of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) due to a disorder of the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus. Increased TSH levels, however, have not been detected in the blood of patients with this illness, and the thyroid glands of patients with hyperthyroidism are not suppressed after administration of thyroid hormone. These observations suggest that the disease is not due to excessive endogenous secretion of normal TSH.Recently, evidence has been presented that . . .